Ensuring Saint Malachy Catholic Church and Pre-School’s facilities can provide a safe and comfortable environment for its parishioners, faculty and students is essential. ABM helped Saint Malachy Catholic Church modernize its HVAC systems, while reducing energy and operational expenses.

Saint Malachy is a Roman Catholic Church and Pre-school located in Kennedy Township, west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Challenge

Saint Malachy Roman Catholic Church’s school, built in 1971, and church, built in 1972, were having issues with older heating and cooling equipment. With no plan to improve or modernize the facilities’ HVAC systems, the cost to maintain the assets continued to rise. Children and faculty were constantly facing comfort issues, while energy and operational costs continually increased.

The Solution

ABM worked closely with Saint Malachy Roman Catholic Church to identify opportunities to create energy and operational savings. Together, they developed a detailed plan to make upgrades, without upfront costs. ABM implemented comprehensive infrastructure improvements through its Energy Performance Contracting Program, creating significant savings to provide funding to upgrade the school and church’s HVAC systems. The program guaranteed Saint Malachy $169,600 in energy and operational savings over 10 years, a yearly savings of more than $16,000.

The Benefits

ABM helped Saint Malachy Catholic Church improve and upgrade its school and church, while creating energy and operational savings, and continues to perform ongoing preventive maintenance through the Guaranteed Professional Maintenance program. Since 2009, the program helped the church save more than $235,000 in energy and operating costs, exceeding its initial energy and operational savings estimate by nearly $67,000.

Other benefits included:

• Recommissioned a 28-year-old chiller to improve efficiency.
• Installed state-of-the-art controls, thermostats and high-efficiency boilers.
• Supplied ongoing, comprehensive maintenance to ensure efficient operation and extended life of existing equipment through the Guaranteed Professional Maintenance program.
• Retrofitted indoor and outdoor lighting systems to energy-efficient LED lighting.
• Enhanced learning environment for students and staff, and enhanced comfort for parishioners.

“As we worked with ABM to develop this customized solution and tracked it over the years, it has exceeded our expectations. Not only has Saint Malachy realized the guaranteed savings, but we have also realized excess savings that have made an impact at the church and school.” — Mr. Jim Zielinski Saint Malachy Catholic Church Director of the Office for Facilities Management and Maintenance.